


chara-citure

by TheElusiveOllie



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Dramatic Irony, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Intended Suicide, One Shot, Pre-Series, Sign Language, anti-fluff, foregone conclusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-16
Updated: 2016-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-27 04:18:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6269395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheElusiveOllie/pseuds/TheElusiveOllie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-series introspective maybe-one-shot regarding Asriel's insight on Chara's inclusion in the royal family and the future of humans and monsters. Definitely not soft Chara, but not hardcore murderous demon Chara either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	chara-citure

“Are you gonna follow or are you just gonna stand there?”

“I don’t think this is a good idea, that’s all - ”

Chara sticks out their tongue. “Wimp.”

Asriel shuffles his feet, claws scuffing the burned-brown-red ground of Hotland as he looks miserably at his toes.

“C’mon, Chara,” he says, hating the whining note in his voice. “You know we shouldn’t be here.”

“That’s what makes it _fun.”_ They grin at him and beckon with both hands. “Now _come on._ I got over the gap, and if I can do it, you can do it.”

One of Hotland’s vents spews out hot clouds of steam, an arrow printed in red neon indicating the direction and magnitude of the resulting trajectory. Asriel shuts his eyes and tries to mentally do the math - his own body mass compared to Chara’s, who isn’t a monster and is made up of flesh and bone and water, so much of them whippet-thin no matter how Toriel chides and insists they put some meat on their frame, and whether Hotland’s vents can tabulate his own weight and adjust accordingly because otherwise it’ll just jettison him way too high up or not carry him far enough and he’ll go crashing into the cliff face with a muffled squeak -

“I’m gonna go on without you!”

Asriel’s eyes pop open in dismay, watching Chara stroll away from the gap at a leisurely place. 

They glance back over their shoulder, their eyes black and bright, their tone bouncing in carefree singsong: “So _c’mon,_ you big dummy.”

“Okay,” he says, and closes his eyes and whispers it to himself to steel his flagging resolve, “okay,” and he takes a flying leap onto the vent and there’s a hot gush of steam around his toes and smoke staining his white fur, and he lands on two feet on the other side.

“See?” Chara crosses their arms, looking immensely pleased. “Told you it wasn’t so bad.”

Asriel doesn’t have it in him to answer. His heart’s pattering away in his chest, but Chara doesn’t give him any time to get it under control. They stride blithely ahead, pausing here and again to peer out over the edges and cock their head as they watch the rifting lava and molten rock drift sluggishly about below. Asriel still lingers, heart in his mouth, as Chara nudges a rock off the cliff with the toe of their shoe.

Then they remember Asriel exists, and look up again.

“You coming?”

Asriel nods and hurries to keep up, a mere half-step behind them as Chara takes the lead, just as they always do. Confident, self-assured, completely or at least outwardly at ease with every aspect of their surroundings - sometimes he wishes he could be them, or be more like them. He should be the one happily leading them around, he’s the one who was _born_ here, but Asriel rarely ever ventured out of the castle walls before Chara arrived in a powder of dirt and pollen.

Chara looks at him oddly, and their dark eyes narrow. “What?”

Asriel startles. “Hm?”

“Why’re you looking at me like that?”

“Oh. Uh.” Asriel scrambles to recover. “Um, I was just wondering why you weren’t evaporating.”

Chara’s expression only becomes more confused. “Huh?”

“‘Cause, you know, you’re all made of water.”

Chara regards him for a solid ten seconds before bursting into a bark of laughter, nudging their adopted brother companionably in the ribs.

“God, you’re such a nerd.”

Coming from anyone else, the comment would sting. But it’s Chara who says it, Chara with that note of unmistakable fondness in their tone and a _Best Friends Forever_ locket around their neck and the swing in their arms and the bounce in their step. Asriel finds he doesn’t mind.

Chara comes to an abrupt stop and Asriel nearly bumps into them, but manages to bring himself to a stop beside them.

“L,” they read out, then snicker. “Wow. Real creative name.”

“Maybe it stands for L-evator?” Asriel chimes in. When Chara merely rolls their eyes in apparent annoyance, he wishes he hadn’t made the pun at all and falls silent.

“Well, c’mon, then.” They hit the button and the doors slide open with a sleek metallic hiss, and again they have to look back when Asriel hasn’t budged.

“That, um, I think we’ve gone far enough for one day,” he stammers, darting a nervous look over one shoulder.

“I’m gonna go on without you,” says Chara teasingly, hand resting on the elevator doors to hold them open. Any minute they could let their hand drop and the doors would slam shut and Asriel would have _no way of knowing_ what floor they’d end up on, and his breath becomes a little tighter in his lungs. “Besides.” They shrug with a mischievous glint to their gaze. “If you don’t come along, I might get lost.”

Asriel shoots one last look behind him before scuttering in behind them.

“We’ll be seen,” he mumbles into the elevator’s metal wall, but Chara merely makes a quiet satisfied sound and hits one of the buttons. The little room shakes a bit on its way down, but Chara simply folds their arms over their chest and taps their foot against the floor, unperturbed.

He doesn’t know why he lets them do this. He doesn’t know why he keeps coming _along._

Maybe it’s like they said. He wants them to be all right, he doesn’t them to get hurt or lost, and however much Toriel might scold and Asgore might sigh for how far they’ve wandered off this time, to lose Chara, the future of all humans and monsters, the ward of the king and queen, as important and treasured by the Underground as any prince or monster child, would be even worse.

They’re his responsibility. Like, his junior responsibility. When he grows up and becomes king he’ll have to do things like this all the time, now that he thinks about it. This? This is just - it’s practice. Right.

It’ll be all right.

Chara peers outside once the doors hush open again and then pushes on ahead. Asriel lags.

“Slow down,” he pants at last, hating himself for having to say anything at all. Chara looks back at him with a faintly disparaging frown.

“What?” they say, in kind of the same way someone might say _what now,_ full of sick exasperation, and Asriel cringes.

“We gotta slow down,” he says. His tongue nearly hangs out of his mouth. The varying shades of red are all searing to his eyes on top of the blistering heat. “‘S’hot.”

“So?” 

“So you’re not covered with _fur.”_

“Oh.” Chara actually looks a shade guilty about that one, and they slow their pace accordingly. That implicit promise seems to fly out of their head when a dark shape looms up in the distance, and they dash ahead and leave Asriel to staggeringly keep up, lagging behind, watching Chara dart toward the indistinct silhouette of a building lost between clouds of smoke and fire.

“Wait!” he calls, but Chara either doesn’t hear or doesn’t care. “Chara!”

When he catches up to them, they’re standing in front of a tall white building in apparent amazement, mouth hanging open. Asriel waits to catch his breath, but Chara seems lost in rapturous awe and doesn’t care.

“That’s the lab,” he says at last, and Chara finally snaps their head around to stare at him.

“Lab?”

“You know, for the Royal Scientist.” He frowns at them. “Haven’t you heard of him?”

Chara shakes their head with a flicker of annoyance. “I wasn’t born here, you know.”

“Oh yeah. Right.” He tamps down the pang of guilt their retort engenders. “Well, Mom and Dad have a Royal Scientist who works on stuff like, um, like breaking the barrier. Important work, right?”

Chara hums their agreement and returns to gazing at the lab, transfixed.

They take a step forward.

“Oh no,” says Asriel, and they take another. He seizes their hand with both of his paws, now thoroughly smoke-stained and sharp-smelling with ash and cinder, but he plants both his feet firmly on the ground and doesn’t let go. _“No._ Hotland is one thing, but the lab is _absolutely, definitely_ off-limits.”

There’s that smile again, creeping like oil over their features, face flushed with the heat. “I just wanna quick look.”

“Chara,” Asriel pleads, eyes widening, _“no._ C’mon, let’s just - we’re in enough trouble as it is!”

“Then it won’t matter if we take a quick look.” They smirk back at him indulgently. “C’mon, Asriel, aren’t you curious?”

“I - ” He shuffles his feet, grip slackening, and Chara yanks their hand free.

“Just a quick peek,” they say, softly cajoling. “We’ll be in and out.”

“Chara, I don’t - I don’t like this game anymore - ”

But they’re already at the doors, and Asriel again has to hurry to meet them. They’re scowling at the keypad beside the lab entrance in frustration, until finally they smack the side of the building.

“What’s, um - ” Asriel starts, but then he catches sight of the weird characters on the keypad. They’re not numbers, or any kind of writing he’s ever seen. They’re all different, pictures of files, folders, little images of papers and keyboards and hourglasses.

He doesn’t know what to make of it, and he can barely contain his relief.

“I guess that’s settled,” he says, altogether too cheerfully. “Can’t go forward, guess we have to go back now, huh?”

Chara glares at the obstinate keypad, then at him.

“You know what any of that crap means?” they demand, flinging out a hand to gesture wildly at the code. Asriel flinches and shakes his head. “No? C’mon, you’re such a nerd, you gotta have _some_ idea.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that before!”

Chara says one of those words that Toriel scolds them for saying, that makes Asriel blush and clap a paw over his own mouth, and stomps away. But not, Asriel notes with swelling distress, back toward the elevator, no. They’re heading for one of the jutting ledges wrapped around the side of the building’s exterior, as if they’re going to try -

“Chara, _no!”_ Asriel cries, but Chara’s jaw is set as they slip onto the ledge and begin to edge along, expression locked into one of stony determination. “Chara, get back!”

He scoots toward the thin little slice of surrounding rock, peers over, and has to jerk back and press himself against the reassuringly solid building wall to keep his gut from lurching with vertigo.

“Chara,” he whimpers to the empty hot air in front of him, “please.”

They’re already halfway across. Occasionally fragments of rock and pebble skitter from around their toes and go plunging into the magma below, but they persevere until they disappear around the corner of the lab, onto the presumably solid ground on the other side. Asriel’s heart drops into his stomach. Oh no. _No._ How’s he supposed to keep track of them now?

“Chara!” he calls, desperately. _”Chara!”_ He searches the edges of the lab for any sign of them on the other side, for any sign that they can hear him or that they haven’t forgotten him or fallen to their death or gotten trapped there.

But nobody came.

Until Asriel startles at the sound of footsteps behind him.

His eyes go wide and scared at the sight of the tall man drawing close, his coat so long and his movements so fluid that it practically looks like he’s gliding. He carries a clipboard, scribbling studiously on it as he goes. A pair of spectacles glint severely on the ridge of where his nose would be, if he were anything but the skeleton he apparently is.

The specifics of the expression lingering behind those eyesockets somehow evades description. Asriel scrunches his nose in contemplation. The cut of the coat is distinct, but the face - eludes him.

The skeleton evidently startles, though he doesn’t make a sound. He regards Asriel for a long moment. Finally, he pins the clipboard between long elbow and hip to leave both hands free.

 _Hello,_ he says with his hands.

“Hi, um, hi?” says Asriel, curious despite the way his heart is drumming behind his ribs. The skeleton raises a spindly, fleshless finger to point to where his ears would be, then makes a curious, squiggly hand gesture that Asriel can’t track. The language he’s using is odd, utterly unfamiliar, and Asriel can’t quite tell how it is he’s able to understand it.

But the meaning behind that signal is clear enough, to him. The other monster must not be able to hear him. With all the roaring of heat and the whooshing of steam and the whirring of cogs in Hotland, Asriel can’t really blame him.

_You must be the prince._

Right now, Asriel feels anything but. He nods once, ears flapping morosely.

The other monster pauses briefly, then, _your sibling?_

Asriel shrugs sadly, then points to laboratory.

Something ripples across the monster’s features, and he moves swiftly to the door, fingertips skittering over the keypad that had so stymied Chara before with silky ease. The door slides open quietly, as if oiled. Asriel inches closer, but the monster holds up a hand, palm out. 

_Stop._

Asriel hesitates, then nods and stays where he is. He shouldn’t even be here in the first place. He won’t argue. This _has_ to be the elusive Royal Scientist he’s heard Asgore and Toriel whisper about in hushed undertone, the one they never talk about if they think he or Chara is listening, which means this lab has to belong to him. He knows it better than anyone. 

So all Asriel can do is wait, breath tight in his lungs, for some sign that Chara’s still all right. He glimpses white-tiled floors and harsh fluorescent lighting before the door shuts as quickly and silently as it opened.

When the door opens again, Asriel’s breath whooshes out of his lungs in a grateful sigh when the tall man is clearly accompanied by someone much shorter, ushering them out with one thin-fingered hand while the other elucidates something at incredible length in a flurry of signals Asriel can barely parse. Chara doesn’t seem to be listening, nor do they seem to care. They barely pay the skeleton any attention before lifting one hand in a lazy wave and turning their back on him entirely.

“You’re okay,” says Asriel, relieved. Chara shrugs and folds their arms, shooting the skeleton an odd look as he turns and retreats back to the confines of his lab.

“I’m fine,” they say shortly. “Let’s get outta here. Mom and Dad are probably worried.”

“What, um,” says Asriel, but Chara grabs his paw in their hand and tugs him along to the elevator before he can get a question out. It’s only when they’re safely in the elevator, the air silent but for the distant hum of circuits, that Asriel looks to them again in worry.

“Are you okay?”

Chara nods brusquely, but he can’t read into the intricacies of their expression. He can’t tell if they’re just trying to get him to stop prying, or if something is genuinely bothering them. They’ve always been hard to read unless they’re smiling or making the creepy face, and this time it’s a little more worrying. Asriel shifts his weight, claws ticking nervously on the metal floor. 

“Are you sure?”

“Fine,” says Chara, the word so clipped that Asriel immediately drops the subject. They just have to focus on getting back to the castle without anyone noticing.

He should’ve known that endeavor would be doomed from the start. Toriel has a few choice words for both of them as she cleans the soot and grime from both their faces with a damp corner of her apron.

“You cannot wander off like that,” she says, rubbing emphatically at the spot between Asriel’s budding horns. “That part of the Underground is no place for children, do you understand?”

Chara snickers as the apron tickles their cheeks, and it doesn’t take long for Toriel’s admonishment to fade into something a little more fond and forgiving.

“You will be the death of me, child,” she says, shaking her head in mock dismay. “Go. Help your father with his flowers. You are not to leave without our permission again, understand?”

Chara ducks her paw as it reaches out to shoo them gently from the kitchen and skips out. Asriel hovers at the door, but the Queen turns away with a sigh.

“Asriel,” she says, drawing his name out in that low-pitched way that signals disappointment. He freezes where he is.

“Mom?”

“Whose idea was it to go out?” says Toriel. She washes her paws in the sink, dries them on a clean towel, and returns to the dough she was kneading before her erstwhile children attempted to sneak past while her back was turned. Asriel draws level with the counter, but can’t bring himself to look his mother in the eye.

“It was Chara’s,” he mumbles.

Again, Toriel sighs.

“I told them we weren’t supposed to,” he says in a hasty afterthought. “They kept saying no one would miss us, but - ”

“Oh, child.” Toriel pauses to shake her head, eyes closing briefly. “You cannot simply leave and wander wherever you wish. You are the future of humans and monsters.”

“I know.” She doesn’t even sound mad. She just sounds so _tired_ and _disappointed_ in him and that just makes it so much _worse._

Her paws work the dough evenly, steadily, her frustration and regret evident only in the occasional tremor in the practiced motions. Asriel watches, silent and withdrawn. He’s seen his mother make her pies thousands of times before. It’s always soothing watching her work, lovingly crafting the dough into the delicate, flaky crust, heating the oven with a wave of her hands and the crackle of sparks at her fingertips.

The long moments past. Then Toriel turns away to look at her child and smiles at him fondly, sadly, wistfully.

“It is getting late. You are about ready for a nap, are you not?”

 _Yeah, I hear that’s called sleeping._ He can almost hear Chara’s indolent drawl behind him, but - no, they’re outside with Asgore, helping him with the flowers like Toriel asked them to. Is Asgore giving them the same treatment? Maybe he should ask. Maybe he shouldn’t.

He recognizes the dismissal for what it is, and ducks out the kitchen with its comforting scents of cinnamon and flour and warming embers.

It’s already gotten dark by the time Chara slips into the room. Asriel peeks out from under the covers, then scrambles out entirely when he realizes it’s them, and not their mother or father peeking in to ensure he’s really asleep.

“Hey,” he says cautiously, hopefully.

Chara regards him blankly for a moment. “Hi.”

“You, um. Are you okay?” He regards them anxiously, squinting in the dim semidarkness any shift in their expression. “You’ve been pretty quiet. And you didn’t come back for hours, and - ”

“I’m fine.” They wave his concern away with a shrug, sidling past him to perch on their bed. They yank shoes off their feet and toss them in a haphazard pile in the general direction of the foot of their bed, hardly bothering to glance where they land.

“Are you sure?”

Chara sighs as they peel their grimy striped sweater off over their head. It too joins the shoes in a careless heap in the corner. Their hands and face are still streaked with dirt from the garden, apparently unwashed, and Chara isn’t displaying any particular inclination to fix that. “I’m _fine,_ Asriel.”

They sound impatient. Are they mad at him? Why is everyone mad at him? 

He sits back and lets them perform every step in their nightly routine with practiced unconcern before finally they crawl under the covers of their bed and roll over with their back to him.

Asriel hesitates, then lowers his voice as he peers at the back of their head.

“What’d you see in there?”

Such a long moment passes that he wonders if Chara’s ignoring him, or if they even heard him at all, but then they abruptly sit up, face him directly, and the intensity of their eyes as they blaze at him is almost too much to bear.

“You said the Royal Scientist is working on breaking the barrier keeping everyone trapped here,” they say, their voice taut, their words rushed, their stare unyielding, “right?”

“Yeah.” Asriel nods eagerly. “That’s what I’ve heard Mom and Dad saying.”

“Well,” says Chara, and their voice lowers drastically, “I don’t think that’s what’s really happening.”

“What?”

“I was _in_ there.” Their tone is low and intent, and Asriel can’t look away from them, rapt with attention. “There was nothing in that stupid lab about breaking the barrier. Just a bunch of weird old machines.”

“M-maybe they’re for research, you know - ”

“No.”

Chara says it with such utter conviction that Asriel falls silent at once. They shake their head firmly.

“That’s not what I saw. There was lots of weird writing, writing like we saw on that keypad, right? Only not all of it looked like that.” They scrunch up their nose thoughtfully. “Some of it was stuff I understood. And it all said stuff about _time.”_

“Time?”

“Looping it. Breaking it.” Their gaze glimmers with something Asriel can’t put a name to. He’s not sure he wants to. “Controlling it.”

Their hand flexes once, then lies still.

“Th - ” The words freeze in his throat. “That’s not possible. Is it?”

“‘Course not,” Chara snorts. “But if that old dolt’s fixed on something that pointless, that means _no one’s_ working on actually getting us out of this dump.”

Asriel shifts on the spot. Chara really thinks the castle is a “dump”?

“What, um. What does that mean for us?” he asks tentatively.

That’s when they smile like they always do, sleek and sly and perfectly controlled.

“It means that I have an idea.”

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know how to continue this without treading on ground that's already been thoroughly explored. Seeing as Gaster is fragmented throughout space and time, technically he already never existed at this point, hence how vague everything about him is. "Vagueness" is pretty much his entire character description, no?
> 
> I've never written Undertale fic before. I tried not to include any math, because I like math, even if I was never much good at it, but it slipped in regardless. So you get a little "Asriel is a giant fucking nerd" bias.


End file.
